For one, it’s a significantly more difficult engineering challenge. Two, it’s unprecedented. OSIRIS was cinematically more dramatic, but we’ve been hitting moving things with moving things for a while. We haven’t done a mechalox reusable massive spaceship before to the point that it’s basically its own category.
Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t find landing a rocket to be terribly impressive. Especially when it’s literally the least critical feature. We can do successful missions without the still very questionable reusable aspects of this extremely late and extremely questionable system.
> Solar deployment is now happening at a roughly $500B annualized rate.
Which technology deployments were larger than this? The US's aircraft production during WWII seems to have peaked at maybe $400B (inflation-adjusted). Global datacenter construction appears to be maybe $200B/year.
And India at #4 is one to watch. There are a lot of people there who will benefit from cheap energy.
It is a bit funny how Germany seems to be floundering thanks to the Energiewende. In hindsight it looks like a clear mistake to have gone in so hard without waiting until it made economic sense.
Take a look at a map, India is far, far more to the south than Germany. I have the feeling that some Germans would see solar power as a panacea even if they lived on the north pole.
Germany will have around 12 GW new solar power installed in 2023 (with about 1/4th of the US population), so a little bit more per capita than the US. It is important to know that almost all of Germany is more to the north than the most northern parts of the US (except Alaska), so solar power in Germany is much less efficient and in winter almost completely useless.
Do you have more information about that? If you average the power over a month, then yes it might be true in the plot, but I suspect it's less smooth in real-time.
It doesn't average out on an intraday basis, but neither does consumption, which has its peaks during the day.
I know someone working at an energy provider heavy on renewables, there they use gas turbines (=biomass) for compensating heavy fluctuations, because those are online in a few minutes.
The shutdown had nothing to do with renewables. It was done by conservatives who, in the same year they took this step, proudly proclaimed that they stopped the buildout of PV in Germany.
Yeah, shortening energy supply when you already have a supply crunch is very good way to kill the economy. The only question is if this was done by stupidity or malice.
"The global temperature dropped between one and three degrees Celsius. It was the coldest year in at least the last 250 years ... led to crop failure, the death of livestock and famine."
Uh………yeah that will happen when the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history happens and blasts 10 cubic miles of material into the atmosphere, which you conveniently forgot to mention. Your example has 0 relevance to climate change.
honestly I think just getting stuff like corners and seam allowances dialed, frame bags (with minimal features) are super fun and easy. I order my tech fabric from seattlefabrics but ripstop by the roll is pretty popular too. it's worth getting a nylon swatch to see all the fabrics next to each other because of all the fabric stores I've been to, almost none have tech fabric.
if you don't have a machine, it's worth going to a store. I tried the thrift store and got one running but the feed dogs were broken. I've only ever had amazing experiences at sewing stores asking for help or guidance.
This comment got downvoted but I think it's an important question.
Answer is: probably not, for the other reason stated. But it is sort of the wrong question too. Is underbrush removal the problem? Not really. There are a lot of things fire removes, besides underbrush, and restores to a natural state.
What we need to wrap our heads around is _fire is natural_; it's been here eons before humans walked the earth, and the native trees and forest have long evolved to take advantage of it.
The question we might ask instead is: why are so we so opposed to a natural process? Fire is definitely bad inside things like cities. However, a prescribed burn has enormous benefits that have been detailed in science literature ever since we noticed a decline in forests.
Autonomous rocket landing on an autonomous ship. It was pretty incredible